Sermons of Rebuke V: Tazria-Metzora

by Rivka Schwartz

Announcements
Shloimi is the new Gabai. Because the rest of you can’t figure out when to start Chazaras HaShas. A bunch of fools spaced out, looking around. The rabbi takes three steps back, you start.
Note to All Congregants: People finish their silent Amidah, you start right away. Otherwise, we will lose congregants to places that are faster. And if you are leading, do it fast. Nobody wants to hear you sing. Even your wives are schepping no Nachis.
 
We are going to stop giving envelopes to people after Aliyahs. We realized that not one person has sent a check to the shul in appreciation. It turns out our membership can’t even afford stamps.
 
You can now donate to the shul. Anything we already have in the shul is up for donation. Bookcases. The Ark. Youth groups. Samantha’s huge hat she decides to wear to block everybody’s view.
 
The annual dinner is next week. We’ve changed the name from the Dinner of Excellence to the Dinner of Fun. We feel this will draw a younger crowd.
 
Contemporary Halacha Class: How to Not Make Everyone Wait, Spacing Out Before Chazaras HaShas. How to Use an Envelope and Make a Donation. How to Get Rid of Past Donations By Taking Off The Cover of The Torah Somebody Else Donated. How to Put a Plaque on Everything With Our Board. How to Make Everything Sound Like a Preschool Program With Our Annual Dinner's Committee.

Rabbi Mendelchem's Drasha Excerpts
Shabbat Shalom My Pupils...
Burns are not Tamei. If you burn yourself on the stove top... Why are you touching stove tops and not speaking Lashon Hara?... Bald men are still pure. Not somebody you’d want to set your daughter up with... Girls aren't attracted to the baldness, Baruch... Doesn't make you contaminated. Just single.

(Vayikra 13:55) Clothes can be contaminated. If the affliction “has not changed its color after it has been washed, and it has not spread, it is contaminated, you shall burn it...” I’ve been telling Nachum to burn his shirt because it’s ugly. Purified clothes can still be ugly when purchased at Costco... Kirkland shirts are great. Did your shirt come with cashews?...

First you try to clean it. (Vayikra 13:54) You clean the contaminated area. Some things you can’t fix. Like our shul. The slow uptake on the cantor's repetition of the Amidah. Donations for everything, causing a deficit... How donations cause a deficit is an anomaly. Yet, our shul somehow finds it normal...

(Vayikra 13:56-58) Clothes become impure too... You need clean clothes. Otherwise, you might as well burn them.
If they come out cleaner, “the affliction left them, it shall be immersed again and it shall become pure.” Pure clothes have to be clean. When you dress like our congregants, with stains all over, you start to ask how much Lashon Hara they’re speaking. And you ask why they keep wearing white shirts... I know you're supposed to wear white on Shabbat. But all I see are red and blue stains...

(Vayikra 14:8) Purification here involves birds... Not out of a hat... Hyssop too... He “shall immerse his clothes, and he shave all his hair, and he shall immerse himself in water and become pure...” He needs a deep clean. After all the Lashon Hara, you smell bad... I don’t know what hyssop is. Maybe they use it to make stuff smell better...

They speak Lashon Hara because you wear messed up clothes. Because you don’t shower. If you showered and didn’t dress like Baruch, who is bald, and maybe wore a hat, to cover up your baldness, nobody would speak Lashon Hara about you...
The point is to be clean when you purify... I’ve seen you bringing grimy pots to the Mikvah... If it’s not clean, it’s not pure... To be clean of sin. To get rid of your messed up clothes. Some things you can't make better. Your sinful stained clothing. You burn it...
Our shul is not pure. This is why we must cleanse the shul of contaminated people who can't Daven...

People who have no idea when to start doing Chazaras HaShas, the repetition, should be quarantine... Then why are they leading?!... Well they shouldn’t lead Davening.
You guys have no idea what to do in shul. You’re like a Chazir stuck in headlights.
Shloimi has the head nod down. He knows people’s names. He’s not afraid to call up people for Aliyahs to the Torah... The last Gabai just stood there hoping somebody would give him an idea of who to call up...
This is why Shloimi is not quarantined. He's a good leader. He knows how to nod at the right moments. He let's the Chazin know to start the repetition of the Amidah...
And your singing is off. This is the only shul where the wives are saying, "My husband has such a bad voice. I wish he wouldn't lead..."
Other shuls have wives that feel like their husband is serenading them when they're taking the Amud... That means being a Chazin. Leading the Tzibur. The Baal Tefilah. Cantor. Baruch! And your wife doesn't want to hear you sing. No wife here wants her husband to serenade her. People would ask why she married that...

Too much donation asking. You even ask people for donations in quarantine... They can't give donations in quarantine. With unclean money...
Why the Aliyah envelopes? People don't use envelopes anymore. They make donations online... Then we should give them the shul's web address... Yes. On Shabbis. When else, Bernie?... It's a web address. It's not a physical address. You can tell people where that is. We don't have to worry about security at the web address. We don't need to put in 500k for a decent firewall...

Be pure. Give to the shul. Give clean money... Money should be run through the laundry after you’ve touched it with all your sneezing in the back to the shul there... Lashon Hara makes people sneeze. Contamination...
It’s like an affliction of sneezing. And then I have to clean my clothes... Handkerchiefs are not pure. They’re Tamei. Not Tahor... Well. Handkerchiefs are disgusting...

Well, the bookcase is in shul. So, it costs more. It’s the space you’re paying for...
Of course. You donate stuff that is already here. It was donated before. Now you redonate. It’s called a redonation... It's where you take away the donation that was there before. And the shul gets more money... I need a raise...
You can donate anything. The shul will take money for anything... How are we going to put a plaque on Samantha's hat?... Money makes things uncontaminated. A donation has the power to give somebody who does not keep the laws of Shabbat an Aliyah... It's how the law works Bernie...

I agree. Dinner of Fun makes no sense. It’s a fundraising dinner. Who’s giving money? Eight-year-olds?...
A fun house is impure. Burn it. We need a pure fundraising event with old people... Because they give money...
Younger crowd? Young people don't give money... Young couples give nothing...
The Beis Knesses Anshei Emes uSefilah Playhouse Funhouse.

It's all here. So much Lashon Hara to be spoken about. The dumb decisions of the president of this shul. The handkerchiefs. The dumb donation ideas. The Dinner of Fun to raise 400K... It doesn't mean you have to speak Lashon Hara about the board and the stupidity. You therefore must atone by cleaning within you the stuff you spoke Lashon Hara about... You shave, because you spoke about somebody's bad hair. Either that, or you look disgusting...

Be pure. Donate in a way of immersion. Immerse into the donations to the shul. Most of all. Make it all make sense. Give a lot of money...

The message of our Parsha is that no matter how Tamei you are. No matter how messed up of a congregation you belong to. No matter how many people speak Lashon Hara about your dumb ideas of Funtime Dinner Night for adults. You have to clean your clothes... Put up a load every once in a while. Otherwise, you're Tamei.
And a happy Yom HaAtzmaut... It's the 5th of Iyar today. And you have a Tamei mind. Not thinking about Israel.

Rivka's Rundown
I so respect our rabbi and his ability to turn any speech into an appeal.
Beautiful Yom HaAtzmaut sermon. I thought the rabbi was going to appeal on behalf of Israel at the end there. But he was focused on his messed-up congregants who he said are too contaminated to be allowed into Israel. I think the rabbi left Israel out of his speech, because the congregation is so messed up. He also doesn't want to lose any money to Israel. To quote the rabbi, "Israel at least has Jews who care, and give their rabbi a raise."

They're so worried about security, the president made the staff bring in a cyber-security team to make sure nobody can find our address. Now, nobody can find the shul, because it's not listed anymore. And nobody can find out when Minyin is, because they can't find the web address.
Security has kept people from showing up to programs. They still don't tell people where or what is going on, for security reasons. And what are they worried about the internet for? Nobody will want to steal the shul's debt, brought on by the Funhouse Fundraiser.

The Parsha is just making fun of bald people. Bald people and people who dress with stains. Either that or Tzara'at.
Baruch is bald and trying to meet a woman. It's a turnoff. All the girls see is a bald four-year-old in their future. Stanley's wife, Nechama, blamed him for their baby coming out of the womb bald. In the birthing unit, she started yelling, "Our baby has no hair because of you. A bald little six pounder." I didn't like the idea of calling the kid a six pounder. When I usually order a six pounder of brisket.
Come to think of it, I can't think of a non-bald man in our congregation.
I agree. Kirkland clothing is not the best thing to tell people about. You shouldn't advertise you purchased your clothes at the grocery.
The sermon started with a whole discussion about how very white people should not be made fun of. Nor should bald people. The rabbi had to explain the difference between Tumah, impurity, and ugly people. The rabbi's main point was the board is contaminated.
It took the rabbi a while to explain how Lashon Hara makes you smell bad. I respect him. He didn't give up on it. He had a concept. Nobody understood it. And he kept with it.

Some of our congregants sneeze a lot. Disgusting. Since COVID, sneezing has finally been accepted as disgusting and reason to quarantine people.

Truth is the last Gabai was just scared. He got attacked for giving an Aliyah once. He thought he was calling up somebody to the Torah. The next thing he knows, he's getting attacked and Moishie is screaming at him, “You called the wrong Balabas again. I’m going to beadle your face.”
Balabas is a Baal Habayit. The head of a household who likes to complain about the rabbi and attack the Gabai.

The Aliyah envelopes are such a scam. Once I saw that, I knew they were trying to get money any way possible.


Donating to the shul is something I'm now having a hard time with. A bookcase is $80. Shul donation, the bookcase is 10k.
The shul is just scamming as much money as possible.
And then it appears they can just drop it for a new one. If there were time commitments, like donation warranties, I would think about doing it. But they'll just get rid of my bookcase and replaque it. If I'm getting a bookcase, I want a lifetime warranty on it. Ikea gives a warranty for eighty-dollars.
It's like a bad dentist, replaquing stuff. They're saying they messed up the first time with the Goldbloom family, and nobody should remember Howard Goldbloom and the two-million-dollars the Goldbloom family donated to the Torah covers.
A bookcase is all I can afford. That's a pathetic thing to donate. Even the tablecloth is more than the bookcase. You donate a bookcase, that's the kind of thing you don't put your name on. You put your name on a building. Maybe an ark. It's Gd's ark, but you put your name on it when you have the money. As the rabbi taught in his sermon, money is pure. If you give enough money, it's your ark. The board will replaque and redonate it. If you give enough money, the Torah is yours too. Given by Moshe. But in our shul it's given by Yankel Simchovitz.
The shul is even having people donate programs. Donate youth groups. Donate a baseball game. Donate something that has nothing to do with Judaism.
They found a way to put on plaque on youth groups. Brilliance. And we have no youth. Some say we have youth. We have children. Youth are kids that care about their Judaism.
Samantha's hat is huge. Very true. You can fit a plaque on it. It might even be bigger than the bookcase. I should donate the hat.

And the Dinner of Fun is $280. I am going to go to Playhouse Funhouse for $15.

The rabbi banned handkerchiefs. He said they are Tamei, due to the disgusting amounts of sneezing in the shul.